Friday, April 29, 2011

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We haven't posted a lot of updates lately, but Richelle Mead's announcement a couple of days ago is something we absolutely had to do a post about! You've probably already heard about it, but if you haven't, Richelle details everything in her latest blog posts, here and here.

Spirit Bound is nominated for Best Teen Book 2010 in the CBC (Children's Book Council) Awards, and as an incentive for us fans to vote for Spirit Bound to win, Richelle promised to write a planned anthology story about Rose and Dimitri visiting his family in Russia!!

Richelle has talked about the overwhelming response to this possible story, and I have to say I'm really not surprised. :-) Personally, this is a story I've been dying to read forever! How about you?

So, what do we have to do to make sure this story becomes a reality? Of course we have to vote for Spirit Bound, but where and how? Well, you simply visit the Children's Book Week site, click on Teens, and select Spirit Bound to win! Fingers crossed!!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

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Hi everyone!
For reasons I won't bore you with (well, I can if you want to ;-), I've been extremely bad at updating the site. I simply haven't had the time or energy for it, what with work etc. It's not that I don't love blogging here. It's just slipped down the list of priorites right now. :S

So this is something I should have done long ago, but, again, for several reasons, I haven't until now.

I want to ask if there is anyone out there interested in contributing to the site? I don't make many demands on what you have to do, but of course it's important that you're able to write so that people understand what you're saying. ;-) A good sense of sentence structure is a plus as well. I'm not a native English speaker/writer, so you don't have to be either, but you should be able to write posts in English without using Google Translate for the entire post. LOL (We've all seen those blog posts and it's always impossible to understand what they said in the first place.)

If you're new to Blogger (the blogging platform we use for the blog at the moment), don't worry. It's easy to learn, and I'll help you with that. Your desire to blog and share information with people is what's most important.

Anyway, if you're interested in being part of this blog, and relaying Vampire Academy info to "the masses", then e-mail me. You can find the e-mail contact in the right sidebar. Write a little about who you are and why you'd like to blog about Vampire Academy. :D

So, hopefully we'll get some more blog posts going here soon. And who knows? I might not get anymore work from next week, and then you'll probably see a lot more of me. But that's nothing I can speculate on right now. :-)

Oh, and Happy Easter to everyone!! I'm enjoying my long weekend in our summer weather here in Sweden right now.

Friday, April 8, 2011

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I thought I would have the time to write a more lengthy post about the fact that Richelle is now at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention (RT). Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it ;-), work called, and my schedule changed.

So, if you are in the Los Angeles area (or are planning to be this weekend, when the convention is open to the public), make sure you check out Richelle's convention schedule, posted on her blog. There are a lot of fun things, but Teen Day, especially, sounds like heaps of fun. So many amazing authors in one place!

Also, make sure to check Richelle's tweets for instant updates. You can also follow the hashtag #RT11 on Twitter, to see what's going on at RT. :D

All of RT sounds absolutely amazing, and I wish I was able to go. (Maybe some day, right?)

If any of our readers are going to RT to meet Richelle, we'd love to hear about it! Among other things, readers will get a sneak peek of the Dark Swan comic.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

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Richelle Mead has just gotten home from Dreamin' in Dallas, a convention I'll be mentioning a bit in another blog post, and a huge upcoming convention is soon on the horizon again.

You've probably heard about the Romantic Times convention. Richelle attended it last year, and we wrote a few blog posts about the fun times that were had then. This year RT is going to have a special focus about Young Adult literature, with more YA authors than you can count attending. In anticipation for that, the Paperpack Dolls have a feature, interviewing several of the authors. We wrote about that a while back, and how you could send in your questions for all the authors.

Now it's time to present the interview they did with Richelle!

She talks a little bit about the wonders of RT, and also about how she needs cats to write, which I love. ;-) (Yes, I'm a cat person. lol) And I'm thrilled that her favorie romantic couple is Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy!! They're one of (if not THE one) my favorites too.

You have to read the entire interview. There are some really great questions and answers. These are a couple of my favorites; some of what she says about her younger readers:

BloodlinesQ: If you could give one piece of advice to young adults (on anything), what would it be?

A: To value themselves, in all things.

Q: As writers of Young Adult fiction, teens (and some adults for that matter) can get kind of obsessed with characters and the authors that created them. Do you enjoy the fame and attention you have gained from writing or is it more of a nuisance?

A: A nuisance? No way. It’s wonderful and flattering (and even unbelievable) that readers can become so dedicated to the worlds and characters I’ve created. I’m grateful and delighted by their enthusiasm.

To read the rest of the interview, visit the Paperback Dolls.
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We've talked before about how the writing community has made wonderful contributions in their efforts to help victims of the ongoing crisis in Japan. One of those ventures, is called Genre For Japan, and it consists of over a hundred items that are auctioned off to benefit the British Red Cross. There are books and art pieces and other amazing things you can bid on.

Perhaps most interesting to the Vampire Academy community, Emma Vieceli, the illustrator of the Vampire Academy Graphic Novels, has a custom sketch up for auction. That means that, if you win the auction, you will get to choose who or what the sketch will portray. How about Dimitri or Adrian? Or maybe a stand-off between the two? ;-) Perhaps a colorful portrait of Abe and all his scarves?

All of the auctions end today, so you only have a few more hours to bid on Emma's sketch, or any of the other auctions.

If you want to bid on Emma Vieceli's auction, you can find it here. At this moment the bid is up to £140.

If you want to see a list of all the auctions you can bid on, to see if there is something else you just have to have, go here.

For details and rules for bidding, click here.

Bidding will close at midnight BST (GMT +1) on Sunday 3rd April.